by Cassia Meare
"No, you don't!" Elinor cried, throwing herself down.
Her mastery of Soaring allowed her to float horizontally above the water. The mermaid's long dark hair sprawled as she kissed Delian, her other arm encircling his waist. His eyes were closed, and he seemed asleep or in ecstasy. Elinor knew that the mermaid was preparing to pull him to the depths — so she grabbed the tail that had risen out of the water to propel its owner down.
The mermaid's lips broke away from Delian's and Elinor saw her face for a moment. It was beautiful, as was her body — at least the part that was human. Her breasts were round and perfect, her waist small, her navel tiny. And then the scales began, but they had a sort of beauty, shining with all the colors of the rainbow.
The mermaid's face changed as soon as she locked eyes with Elinor. Her pretty mouth opened so wide it was like a beast's jaw, full of large, sharp teeth, and the eyes now flashed red in maniacal greed and wrath. Her hands became claws digging into Delian, unwilling to let go of her prey.
"Unhand him!" Elinor ordered, floating above the mermaid to grab a handful of her hair.
The mermaid’s head rose out of the water, teeth snapping at Elinor as she gave an awful shriek. But Elinor was having none of it. With a cry of her own she placed her hand between them and loosed a bolt of blue energy that struck the mermaid in the teeth.
The shock of the bolt made the mermaid cover her mouth, and Elinor shot another burst, angrier and red, that struck her in the eye. Howling, the creature let go of Delian. He started to sink, and Elinor used the power from both her hands to send the mermaid down into the water so she could reach for Delian and pull him up.
"Give me strength," she asked between gritted teeth as she held onto him. He was like a stone; the ship had kept riding the mist, away from them, and the water was tugging on Delian's body.
Between a grunt and a scream, Elinor managed to use the wave lapping against the rocks to haul Delian there, still riding the air. She stuck a foot through a hole in a craggy peak and leaned against the cliff. Out of breath and out of strength, she dropped Delian. He opened his eyes as soon as he hit the rock.
"Ow," he said. "What the hell?"
"That's what I should ask you," she said. "You told me not to look."
Glancing around for a second, Delian got his bearings and quickly climbed to where she was. "Sorry. Ah, the ship! Nice luck, that."
For the vessel had continued softly on its way, only to bump against a rock, unable to steer around it, and stay there.
"Thank God," Elinor exclaimed. "I didn't know if I could bring it back with thoughts."
"Come," Delian said, taking her hand. "We'll climb to it."
By going up the rocks like goats, they didn't take long to reach the boat; but they were wet, and Elinor didn't like how dark it was getting. Not with everything that was around them. Delian could see well in the dark, but he might just start looking at more mermaids.
He peeped into a cave and pulled her up to it. Leaving her at the entrance, he went inside to make sure there was nothing huge and full of tentacles they should fear.
"We can sleep here," he assured her as he returned. "Not a kraken anywhere."
They broke some wood off a bench in the boat and made a lively fire inside. Delian undressed, telling her not to peek but meaning all the opposite. When Elinor turned back, he had wrapped a colorful banner around his waist and arranged his clothes on stones around the fire to dry. Sitting down, she only spread her skirt before the flames, as she was not very wet.
"Could catch your death, Lady E," he observed with a smile as he pulled the spare sail from the boat into the cave.
She threw him a baleful look. "You could have caught yours, I think."
Delian sighed. "Am not made to resist the warning not to look at a naked woman. Have to check, innit? Is it a beautiful naked woman? Which she kind of was."
"Right until she turned into a horrible monster trying to eat your neck."
"Bit of false advertising, that. Which is why I hate magic and creatures. Underhanded."
"Now that we are here," Elinor observed, "I think we might just make it over there. To the sanctuary."
"I don't doubt we will make it there. It's just that whatever happens, we need to get back to the forces quickly," Delian said. "Have to be next to my brother when things start."
They exchanged a look. So many things to consider. Such desperate things to try.
"Crap," Delian said, waving his hand around his ears. He stood and shook his head as if he had gone mad.
"What is it?"
"Sprites." He got hold of his shirt. "I hate them."
Elinor couldn't see anything, but he began snapping the shirt in the air, and then she did hear faint little cries of surprise and pain.
"They're not over here," she said.
"No, they love blue blood, the little bastards," Delian complained. His shirt cracked again. "Ha!"
Something landed at the bottom of Elinor's green skirt and the firelight revealed a fairy. It had the elongated body and limbs of a human but the furry face of a moth with the tiny beak of a bird. As Elinor bent to peer at it, the sprite took to the air and rushed toward her, only to be driven back by another strike of Delian's shirt.
"You, get off. Sorry, Lady E, didn't mean to send the bloody thing your way." Delian was now wrapping the shirt around his head even as he lay down on the sail. "I'd advise you to cover your ears. They make an infernal noise, and sometimes they even get inside to torture you more. Or eat your brain."
"By heaven!" Elinor exclaimed, moving to the sail as well, where she dropped next to him. "They're demons, then?"
"Don't know what they are, strictly," Delian mumbled, folding and fluffing the upper part of the sail so it would act as a pillow. He stretched out, arm behind his head.
With a white turban and the colorful cloth around his hips, he looked exotic — like a golden Turk. Elinor lay next to him.
"If they don't let us sleep," he said, and raised his voice to complete the threat, "I'll burn the lot of them!"
There was rebellious buzzing at this, and the fast flapping of wings. Elinor drew her hair over her ears and made a tight bun to keep it in place — although perhaps the demons could part that with their tiny hands.
"Do they really eat brains?" she asked.
Delian turned on his side, away from her. "So people say. It would be a great waste if they ate yours. I bet the idiots wouldn't even get smarter from feeding on it."
A shrill little cry might have been a protest at this insult.
"Shut up, thing," Delian said quietly. "I'm in no mood."
Elinor couldn't help turning toward the same side and creeping closer to Delian. He held out a hand to her over his waist and she took it. She felt better.
"Don't worry, I shall not try any business," he said. "Little monsters watching."
She laughed.
"And my brother would kill me."
"Nemours?"
"Only brother I have," he added softly after a moment.
She squeezed his hand, and he held on to hers.
"Ahn hasn't brought Sefira back," he said after another while. "Wonder what's up with that."
She hesitated before she asked, "Do you want her to?"
"No," he said. "But Nemours does."
"To kill her a thousand times, as Lamia said?"
"No. Because he wants her back. He never gives up on anyone." Delian scoffed. "He could not even burn the heart of that other big shit, Ydin. Nemours loves Sefira, for all that he may have cut her." Taking a deep breath, he added, "But when Ahn brings her back, I'm the one who will kill her."
Elinor held on tightly to his hand as she listened.
"I will kill her over and over again," Delian said, his voice low and lilting, like a lullaby. "A thousand times. A million times. I'll kill her as many times as I have to, until she never lives again — like Ty."
30
The House of Mages did not have a great hall leading t
o corridors or various chambers. As soon as Nemours entered, there was just one space, blocked off by four walls. One of them was covered by a mirror.
The space also had many stairs. At a glance he could see they led nowhere.
They had been built as an optical illusion, so that a set of steps could appear to lead up or down at the same time. All the sets converged on a central space, yet another illusion. Turrets signaled the end of a flight of steps, only for them to lead to more steps at an angle, which turned out to be an arch in the ceiling.
Decoration in the form of gargoyles, chimeras and serpents increased the illusion: apparently they sat side by side, but in fact they belonged to different planes. Faces engraved on stone could be seen as a man with his beard hanging low and then, upside down, as a woman with hair piled high, depending on where you were standing. Something with dimension turned out to be flat and vice versa.
No bridge, passage or tower led anywhere but to something else like it, in a loop.
The stone walls made it clear where the features of the room ended, at least those that didn't loop onto a similar feature. The mirror only served to increase the confusion and the infinity of angles.
Nemours didn't enter the labyrinth. He knew enough about impossible objects to understand that trying to follow the steps anywhere would only confound him.
On Earth, in the drawings of Escher or the conceits of the Penroses, there had been no point to a visual system like this except illusion. Here there was a point. As big as the space was, it was not the whole house. The real House of Mages lay beyond this trick.
In Elinor’s vision, Lotho had entered through the same door as he — and the solution to the puzzle rested in the mind, not in vain physical effort.
His eyes scanned the place, letting his brain see things one way and then another — and then another. There were three possible planes: the normal one, the upside down one and the perpendicular one.
It had not been too difficult to get into the house, and perhaps that was so that an invader would think the next solution as easy. The carved animals, therefore, were too obvious a distraction.
But the surfaces duplicated each other. A column, for instance, separated identical sets of steps, one set going up, the other down. Or was it the other way round?
Reflections: it was a theme. Which meant that the mirror was the answer. Anyone in the chamber would turn his back on it to avoid more confusion, but it must be the way forward.
He turned toward the mirrored wall and avoided looking at the image of the room behind him. There, illusion only met more illusion. Instead he searched the edges of the mirror and finally found something — a black space.
Negative spaces, of course. When finding the hekas, they had had to look for the symbols formed between the contours of figures. Studying the structures was a mistake and yet what most people would do, seeking to solve the puzzle of stairs and columns to get beyond the walls when they needed to find a hole.
For the house was in fact beneath him.
Nemours crouched and peered inside the hole, making out a glow at the end, to the right. There was a corridor down there, and more chambers.
The advantage of being immortal was that one didn't have to worry about things too much. He jumped inside and found himself slipping through a smooth, narrow tunnel that bore him with increasing speed to the lower level of the house. The architecture was kind: A curve in the tunnel slowed him down and deposited him softly below.
The glow became stronger as he reached a corridor that led nowhere.
No, not nowhere, he thought as he walked along a path illuminated by the ever-burning flame of magic. The path led to a stone wall, and it was in fact another door.
This door presented another puzzle, but now he recognized the symbols immediately. The seven hekas, plus the Key. They were nicely engraved on smooth stone, and he understood that he had to order them as well, just as he had ordered the constellations outside.
Vidar had discovered the order of the quest, and whoever was resourceful enough to do the same would probably get the power or advantage he had hidden inside.
Cheeky mage.
Lotho must have come for the advantage; why risk being in Witchsweep, if not for something vital? He had figured out the order from Time, which had been his, and what they had found on Earth.
And this would help Nemours.
The order until then had been: Protection, Crossing, Binding, Likeness.
If Lotho knew the next one, it was not Time. No, Time had to be after the next, because Lotho would know who had passed a clue to him and to whom he had passed his; and there would then be one left, the heka after Time.
Nemours only had to know what came next and before Time: Change or Might.
The odds were fifty-fifty, but if he got it wrong, he suspected not only that something unpleasant would happen, but that the real interior of the House of Mages would become impregnable to him.
And while it would be hard to kill an Original, he could get trapped for a while, having no special strength to break through stone. He might sit in some dungeon for the rest of eternity, although he had a clever witch and a determined brother on his side.
He felt his damned pride rising. It wouldn't do for Elinor to have to come and dig him out while the war probably raged on without him. The resourceful damsel rescuing the something-like-a-god in distress.
So far, the hekas had not uniformly led to higher powers. The first one had been Protection, which many would not even have needed. Certainly not immortals. Then Crossing, to allow the seeker to get to the other hekas more quickly. Then Binding — a chance to stop someone, either because the seeker was being followed or trying to catch another seeker. Binding, as he knew to his annoyance, had been conceived to even the playing field.
Likeness was a step up in terms of power. And after whatever came next there was Time, another chance to speed up the quest or get ahead.
Therefore, it stood to reason — if anything could be said to — that the next power would be a step down from Likeness, not up.
Which was greater, Might or Change?
Might gave an individual so much strength that his or her powers would be multiplied, making them physically invincible.
However, the possibility of conflict — of war, even — had been inbuilt in this quest. And no conflict or war was ever won by an individual. Aya had imagined that a conflict would arise, which is why she and Atra had designed loops into the quest.
He approached the hekas. Change was the triangle with the cross beneath it. It was the very principle of life: fashioning people and animals from earth and minerals and other things.
The arrow of Might, crossed by two other arrows, was straightforward. It was not a subtle power. The end should lead them to the beginning; to creation.
Might was not a power for the end — Change was.
Nemours began to move the stones and they slid easily under his hand.
Protection
Crossing
Binding
Likeness
Might
Time
Change
His hand rested on the Key for a moment: a cross with a circle at each end. It would lock his choice.
He moved it to its place, at the end of the row.
The wall and the ground shook as he stepped back, hand on the pommel of his sword. No, he wouldn't fall into a hole or get trapped by spikes or bars. No, he was right. He was right.
With a deep rumble, the stone moved aside for him.
Nemours leapt through. "Why, thank you."
Now he was in another enormous, rectangular chamber, well-lit for a subterranean enclosure. Its four edges had a line of columns each — there were more than thirty columns. And next to each column stood a man.
And every man was Lotho Sils.
31
Duplication.
Much like the impossible stairs at the entrance, duplication was illusion — a theme dear to mages. A theme Nemou
rs hated, for it was a perversion of the intellect in the service of … nothing good.
Which was the real Lotho?
Nemours wasted no time discovering whether this duplication came with addition. He unsheathed his sword and cut off the head of the first man. It rolled away as the body immediately split into two, both smiling at him.
Yes, the more duplicates he cut down, the more would appear. The spell had addition. The two new copies had already become four, and the mages would only grow in number, should Nemours go on killing them.
But the theme of the house was also reflections, and he had the Likeness heka. Duplication, even with addition, was not a difficult spell, although he had not studied it. Still, he could steal it — and he did, drawing the spell without having to pinpoint its exact source.
Copies of him stepped out of his body, in full sight of Lotho, who knew which was Nemours only until there were so many that the prince could shuffle among his doubles.
You were too slow, mage.
Now they had the same disadvantage, or advantage: not knowing which one was the original who must be stopped, but able to keep reproducing when attacked.
And as the rows of mages faced the rows of princes, Nemours understood that everything would, once more, come down to the mind. He could feel something poking at his thoughts: Lotho, trying to retrace the Likeness spell and grab it. Oh, the Tuii would be able to do real damage if he got that heka off Nemours.
No chance, Timekeeper. I'm not Lord Tayne or some feeble mortal you can abuse.
Nemours blocked the probing, and now whoever made the first move would show his hand.
And duplicates became more stupid and harder to control as they got away from the original. Nemours' copies would have less and less control over his worst faults. Pride. Impatience. Wrath.
But doubt was another illusion, just as arrogance was. Mages and witches fed on illusion. On uncertainty. On pain. They were vultures able to hide weaknesses where others would reveal theirs.
Laughter rose from his duplicates — every type of laughter, down to a silly giggle.
